Part 8

"See!" said a soldier, who held his bayonet ready, "there is blood on his sleeve." The Hun cursed within his heart.

"It was none of my shedding," he whimpered.

"I had not said so," returned the sergeant quietly.

"We are here to find that out. Perhaps you know something about the lost child?"

"I had no hand in it, God strike me dead!" the Hun answered fervently.

At that moment there was a sort of earthquake upstairs, a clash of falling bricks and slates, a crashing pandemonium that sent everyone's heart to his mouth. A shell had struck the roof. Then the ceiling above bulged like a stuffed sack and burst in a cloud of pink-yellow dust. Something dropped with a dead thud fair and square in the centre of the fine oak refectory table. Sergeant Stansfield bent forward, looked, and then started back. He gave a cry and turned sickly white. On the table lay _the little huddled form of Boudru_. The morning sun that had been paling the candles in the sconces, struck the golden hair and staring eyes, that had a few hours before, held all the spring-time; struck, too, a heavy scarlet patch on the little overall, as the sergeant tenderly turned the little body over....

"Oh! God of Mercy!... How horrible! A bayonet through his heart ..." he muttered. The Hun's sleeve spotted with blood came back to his mind, and filled him with blind, unreasoning rage.

"You swine," he said. "I'll----"

The man from Stettin suddenly felt his heart stop beating. He stood petrified for a moment; then he clutched the table with one feverish movement; and when he saw the pale cherub face, he became covered at once with perspiration. Then the terror, which had paralyzed him a second or so, gave way to the wild instinct of self-preservation. He hit out wildly with both arms, kicking out at the same moment. In a second he was out in the hall, and had locked the door behind him. A door opened somewhere outside, and they heard him running down the garden. Some of the men snatched their rifles, rushed to the window, and threw it open. Four or five shots rang out simultaneously, and the stench of cordite was wafted back on the sharp morning air as the man from Stettin fell in a crumpled heap, his face buried in a clump of violets. The sergeant went into the garden.

"Hum!" he remarked after an instant, "dead, did you say? He's as dead as a doornail ... anyway, it's nothing to do with us! If ever a soul went straight to hell," he muttered to himself, "it was that red devil's."

IV

THE STORY OF A SPY

Donald McNab, private (and distinguished ornament) of the London Regiment, leaned his elbows on the little oak table in the bar of the "Three Nuns," and eyed me with withering contempt. From a corner of the settle I stared--with a wholly unsuccessful attempt to look unconcerned--at a quaint old painting of Sergeant Broughton who first taught Englishmen to box scientifically. When the great are really wrathful it ill becomes pigmy people to jabber or argue. So I waited with bent head and respectful silence to which the passing moods of such an erratic genius are entitled.

When McNab and I had met an hour or so before we had been on the most friendly terms. We had both ordered our pint of beer, filled our pipes, and retired to a corner in the bar parlour feeling at peace with the world--barring of course the German Empire and their allied forces. Everything, in fact, made for peace and goodwill between us; yet, because I had spoken with some levity about our incomplete spy system, McNab's wrath had come down on my head like the proverbial "hundred of bricks."

"It seems strange," I had remarked to him, "that the Huns can always forestall our most carefully-prepared plans through their almost perfect spy system. Our fellows must be dead stupid at the game. Why aren't these German vipers ever nabbed?"

"Dead stupid!" McNab had exclaimed, after gazing at me for a minute in dazed stupefaction at my unspeakable temerity in challenging the proficiency of the British Army. "Get under your Blanco pot!"

Now, when McNab used this picturesque term to me I knew that there was a storm brewing. He only used the expression when he wished to be

## particularly "cutting," and I received his reproof with, I hope, a

correct realisation of my own insignificance.

The old world had rolled along for another twenty minutes ere McNab shifted his legs, cleared his throat, and interfered with what was left in his tankard.

"I wonder," he said musingly to himself, "if these poor yobs over here will ever know the true 'istory of this bloomin' war?" Then back came a smile to his face and he shook his head, indicating, perhaps, that he had answered the question to his complete satisfaction. The joyousness at the thought of some of those unrecorded slices of military history caused my friend to drop again into a contemplative mood, and he started humming a little tune under his breath:

Hello! Hello! who's your lady friend? Who's the little girlie by your side? I've seen you with a girl or two, Oh, oh, oh, I AM surprised at you! Hello! Hello! what's your little game? Don't you think it's time your ways to mend? That's not the gal I saw you with at Brighton, Oh, oh, oh, who's your lady friend?

"If it is not a rude question," I ventured, after another few moments, "did you ever see the capture of a German spy over in France, Mr. McNab?"

"Who are you getting at ... trying to pull my leg?" he demanded, with increased suspicion.

"Come, come," I laughed, "let us agree to differ about our--er--inferior spy system."

"Superior," he insisted.

I surrendered before the gleam of his eye. Fool that I had been, ever to have imagined that I could conquer McNab's steely glance!

"Superior then, if you prefer it."

McNab's eyes, which had glared with indignation, lost their fire and assumed their normal expression of calm and relentless despotism, and the red flag of agitated displeasure disappeared from his tanned face. He seized with alacrity the olive branch (also another tankard of beer) which I held out to him.

"The history of the British Army," he observed as he blew at his ale "'minds me of a married soldier's letter to his wife. The most interesting parts are all left out ... do you get me?"

McNab tilted his hat at a perilous angle on one side of his head, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

"Touching upon some of those unwritten exploits of the Army," I darkly hinted: "I'll bet I can find a brilliant historiographer not a hundred miles away from the 'Three Nuns' who could dictate a few of 'em that would fairly make the _Daily Mail_ turn green with envy--eh, McNab?"

"I know the brilliant bloke you mean," my friend conceded modestly, "though calling me 'orrible names like that would brand you as a swanker or a gentleman wot had left his manners in the hall in any barrack room from here to Hindustan. When we were resting at Quality Street near Loos, for example"--he paused a moment, and with a playful dig from his banana-like thumb nearly knocked me on the floor--"why, name of a dog! There you have a case in point!"

"A case of a swanker?"

"A case of one of those spies. We caught the perisher. Begad, we did!"

McNab put the red-hot end of a cigarette into his mouth, stammered with wrath in a medley of international profanity at the unexpected warmth, and would not be comforted till his favourite barmaid had placed a slice of cooling lemon on his tongue.

"My first introduction to the entertaining sport of spy tracking," he mumbled, "was at Loos, where I was sent with several hundred other chaps to help push the Huns out of the Hohenzollern Redoubt. At the present moment, as you know (or ought to by this time), I am a military genius 'ighly thought of at the War Office, a strategist Kitchener has his eye on, and a model soldier quoted every day by my colonel as a shining light to the regiment. But of course you must remember that a few months ago I was practically a yob at the game, and now of the fame (and the extreme shyness that seems to come with it) of my later avatar.

"We took over some temporary billets at a shady little spot not far behind the British trenches which was then known as 'Quality Street,'" he continued, "and, as I not unreasonably supposed that the smartest and most intelligent bloke in the regiment would be sent to 'elp the colonel, I requested the Dog's Leg (Anglice--lance-corporal) to point out his abode to me.

"'Ask the Quarter Bloke over along in the end cottage, old sport,' he said with a grin, 'he'll be most 'appy, I've no doubt to personally conduct to the old pot-an-pan, and while you're there just ask him to let you have that jug of defaulters' extra milk for me.' It was a 'wheeze' among the boys to send a poor innocent bloke off for this milk. The point of the 'wheeze' is in the fact that as defaulters are chaps doing jankers (Anglice--punishment) they are hardly likely to get any extra milk dished out to them. I did not see the joke at first; but on application to that autocratic beggar--Quartermaster King was his tally--he fully explained things to me in that witheringly sarcastic manner peculiar to sergeant-majors and quarter-blokes.

"'Defaulter's milk?' echoed he. 'Why, you lop-eared leper, you've got corpuscular fool wrote as plain as a motor lorry number all over your ugly face. If I wasn't sure that you was not more of a born idiot than a ruddy knave, etc., etc., etc., I would have you slick in mush before your feet could touch the ground!'

"Much crest-fallen, and terribly mortified, I returned to the cottage which had been selected to shelter me noble self, only to be met there with a volley of derisive laughter, repeated demands for the jug of Defaulter's milk, and questions about the quarter bloke's health.

"'A cat may look at a _King_,' said the Dog's Leg, and fell backwards out of the open window at his own joke, breaking 'is collar bone. One should never forget, at every time, as the Scriptures say, that pride allus goes before a fall, and that all the King's 'orses and all the King's men can't not even pick 'im up again!"

My murmured compliments on his amazing aptness in the knowledge of Holy Writ were checked by a sudden discovery that my best silver cigarette case had vanished from the table.

"Which of you civilians has stole the gentleman's silver case?"

This question, uttered not in the friendliest possible terms, was addressed to a young gentleman with a very pimply face, and kaleidoscopic coloured socks, of the genus Slacker, who had suddenly found the painting of Sergeant Broughton an object of absorbing interest.

This inquiry meeting with no response from the Slimy Slacker, (to use McNab's expressive name for him), he gave utterance to a sigh of resignation.

"I believe, sir," suggested an old gentleman who was warming his toes at the fire, "that you deposited the gentleman's cigarette case--er--inadvertently in your own pocket!"

"Why, strike me crimson!" cried McNab, diving his beef-steakish hands into his tunic pockets. "Why, so I did! I'm the biggest giddy fool at that kind of wheeze that ever lived. It's a knock-out, ain't it? Never mind--'_honi soit qui mal y_ eighteen pence,' as the French poet bloke said!

"It so happened that on the very next day our old man's servant went sick, and in spite of my extreme youth and innocence, I was selected from the crowd to fill the vacant billet. And then it was that the Colonel realised that fate had dropped a heaven-sent blessing on his knees in the shape of a--well, in the shape of an ingenious bloke like me. He lifted up his voice in thanksgiving for that the British Army held warriors so wise, and then looked up his whiskey and cigars.

"At one end of Quality Street there stood a Y.M.C.A. hut. On the next day when I pushed the door of this Bun-Wallah's paradise open, the first person I saw was old Tommy--Tommy wot had fought up and down the Godforsaken veldt with me for three years on end, Tommy who had always the knack of droppin' out of the blue from nowhere.

"'Well, 'ere's a go!' he cried dropping half a cup of boiling coffee down another chap's neck, as 'is smile broadened, 'it's a 'ell of a time since I struck you.'

"I saw the dawn of recognition on his ugly mug; and I could have guessed to a word the joyful expressions of welcome that were springing to his lips."

McNab paused.

"Quite so," I prompted, seeing the change that took place in my friend's face.

"I am afraid I should have guessed dead wrong," continued McNab with his eyes downcast. "However, what he did spit out was: 'strike me up a gum-tree if it ain't the bloke what borrowed 'alf a crown off me when I was quartered at the "Shot" in '98.'

"I was pretty well worked up at this remark; but I said to him with quiet dignity: 'I believe, Tommy, that I sent it back by post.'

"'You sent me back a threepenny bit,' he says, with a very naughty word, 'and told me it was my 'alf crown worn down.'

"'Come, come, old chum!' I laughed, 'let us forget all about that, such a thing is really only "very small beer" indeed.'

"'Humph!' grunted Tommy. 'It was a blighted small 'alf crown, too.'

"'Sit down,' he continued, clutching me by the wrist and dragging me into a vacant chair. It was not in champagne, of course, that we drank each other's health. But you can always trust old Tommy to have a little pig's ear hidden somewhere. 'What's the matter with a bottle of Bass?' says he to me. ''Tis against ole Kitchener's wishes,' says I. 'Of course it is,' says Tommy; 'and wot is more, it's the ruin of dear ole England--God bless it!' 'Rot yar innards--let's go and 'ave some,' I says bein' always one to reason out matters to a logical conclusion.

"There is a large slag heap in the neighbourhood of Quality Street where the French and Germans met early in the war. They wanted each other's company exclusive on this here heap. Well, they met, and fell to arguin' whether the French should 'ave it as a mounting for a few machine-guns or the Germans should keep it for sniping purposes. Hence the air was soon clouded with shells, shrapnel, and all other deadly diseases. Seeing the children had got over their shyness in this little fright and had really played quite a good game, this particular slag heap was bearing abundant fruit in the way of trophies. Furthermore, Tommy suggested that it would be indeed nice if we could make our way there one evening and collect a few German helmets, bayonets, and other curiosities for the old people at home.

"As a result of our confabulation we found ourselves about ten that night crawling up a hedge towards the slag heap in question. When we did get there we went and lost our blighted selves. How long we were crawling and twisting about that Gawd-forsaken heap or which way our lines lay I'd no means of knowing. But poor old Tommy rolled down a bank with an armful of German helmets and other trophies, making a noise like a fire engine galloping up the Mile End Road. Then suddenly one of those German flares fell on the ground about a hundred yards away, and all things, including Tommy and I, shone out in their naked splendour. Then you can take it from me we _did_ see where we were.

"I thought Tommy was having a bad attack of epileptic fits for a moment, till it transpired that he had flumped down on a dead Boche in endeavouring to escape the searching glare of the flare. After the thing had burnt its giddy self out Tommy crawled crab-fashion over into the providential cutting in which I had taken shelter. He was wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, and he looked very solemn and rather frightened. 'Did you spot that chap crouching in that V-shaped cutting down there?' he said. 'I thought he was one of our old crowd at first, but what with that cursed light and the excitement I could not be certain.'

"'I saw nothing.'

"'Just before the flare went up I noticed a flash lamp; one of those things used to give signals with. I got an awful turn then.'

"'Rot,' I said: 'I don't believe a word of it.'

"'Do you mind coming over this way then?' said Tommy.

"In the pitch-black darkness, guided by Tommy, I stumbled up a path which I'll swear was all of a one in three gradient. We came out upon a little ledge overlooking what we now knew to be the German lines. Tommy motioned me to keep my eye on the V-shaped cutting in the slag below us.

"'I think the beggar is down in the extreme angle of the V,' he whispered as he crawled beside me.

"Then I overbalanced, fell over the ridge, and dropped clean on to something soft and yielding below. Red specks dotted the blackness before my eyes for a few moments as I bounced on the hard stones. I jumped up with a jerk and spun round to find, blocking my path, a menacing figure regarding me over the barrel of a Browning pistol. In the other hand he held an electric torch.

"'Don't move,' he said in good English.

"His tone was quiet and crisp, an' his face showed me that 'e was out for blood.

"'I have it in my mind almost to be sorry for you, British Tommy,' he said calmly, 'You know too much. I am going to decide on the best way to dis----'

"He got as far as 'dis'--when something leaped out of the shadows and he was hurled back with a sudden rush. It was Tommy, and he swung his heavy Boche rifle and stove the man down with terrific force. There was a dreadful half-choked, whimper and then silence.

"Tommy stood regarding the still form with a bleached face. He then bent over him, but without touching, looked up at me.

"'Saved a firing party the trouble,' he said. 'He's dead all right.'

"He straightened himself up.

"'What the devil shall we do with it, McNab?'

"''Tis a spy he was,' I answered, 'and it's ten to one that he has a code or some kind of papers tucked away on him. Just run through his pockets before we leave him.'

"'No, no,' Tommy said, 'I can't touch him he'll haunt me, sure.'

"The man was quite dead when I rolled him over. I took from his pockets a leather bound code book, English, French and German bank notes, and a gold stop watch.

"'No good stayin' here,' said Tommy, 'I vote we crawl back and talk it over. This is a crummy old place.'

"When we got back to billets and examined our loot, it was a sure enough German spy's code book, and it contained a rough sketch of all our trenches and what not, quite sufficient to use in conjunction with the squared map he carried. The book was printed in German.

"'You know,' said Tommy, 'we must report this to the Colonel as soon as we can.'

"'An' be collared for being out at night without a pass first thing? Not much,' said I.

"'We must hide this loot. They may search us when they find him out there,' said Tommy, looking to the future.

"'Hide away, then,' I said, but my mind was elsewhere, for all of a sudden, I had been hit in the eye with a brilliant inspiration.

"The following morning, when I took our ole man his early tea, I found 'im sitting up in bed sucking a fat cigar and bewilderin' himself with the brigade orders.

"'I beg your pardon, sir!' I says, 'but may I have a word with you?'

"'You know, McNab,' he says, screwing his eye-glass into his eye with a smile--'you know that I am at any hour of the day or night glad to have a talk to a man of understanding like yourself.'

"'That's good of you, Colonel,' I says, 'to meet me with such kindness. But I think, as you say, that I have just a little more than the usual share of intellec' under my hat, but what I have come to lay before your notice is this: I have discovered why the Boche guns always register on our artillery positions the moment they are taken up, and the source of the leakage of information.'

"'Oh, you have, have you?' says he.

"''Tis a spy, sir,' says I, 'and it's signalling to the Huns he was when I caught him.'

"'Another blessed spy legend,' he yawned, 'I really thought that you, McNab, would be the last man to become afflicted with the spy craze. I have arrested half a dozen so-called spies this week already only to find they were harmless rustics--'

"'I beg your pardon, Colonel,' I returns, with that chilling dignity which has at times even made generals falter, 'but there is no legend about Private McNab's spy.'

"'Then trot out your spy,' he says, 'and I'll come and look 'im over.'

"'I not only caught him red-handed at his nefarious trafficking (them was the very words I used) ... I not only caught the blighter, but I put his light out.'

"'What?' he shouts, clutching my arm, 'you killed the poor brute.'

"'_We_ did--me and Tommy, and we found this here code in his fob,' said I.

"With that I threw the little code book on the bed, and the old man, after looking through it carefully (he could read German, our old man), got out of bed and started dressing in a businesslike way.

"'Shut that door, McNab,' says he, 'and let me have the benefit of your invaluable advice.'

"All of a sudden I was struck with a brilliant inspiration, and I let the old Colonel have it for what it was worth.

"As it happened the old man thought a mighty lot of it--such a lot, in fact, that by one o'clock that day he started to imagine the inspiration had come from his own fertile brain. He liked to think that it was his, and, Lord bless 'im, I don't grudge him the glory.

"After laying our heads together, the Colonel went back to the artillery lines and spent three hours talking to the Battery Major, and I looted a dozen three-pounder rockets of var-i-ous colours out of the stores. In the afternoon the Colonel called all his officers together, and kept the blighted motorcycle dispatch riders busy buzzing up and down the line with messages, till late in the evening.